Luckily, I got the isle seat since Ryan is always very gracious when it comes to seats on planes and always lets me have the window or isle. This row was like 7 seats long so I was happy to not be stuck in the middle. However, there was a HUGE man sitting in front of me so his seat went back at least 2 inches further than all the rest. Even my tiny short legs couldn’t fit.

So just a note for anyone thinking of going on an international flight in economy… Don’t fly with United! Their economy is the smallest ever. What there business class was is what most planes are for economy. Needless to say, I’m not thrilled about the flight back but very very thrilled that the flight is to hawaii.

So anyways, we got to China safe and sound. Got our luggage without any problems and I experienced my first “squattie” toilet. I went into the bathroom and since there was a line I went into the first available which contained no throne for me but just a lovely hole in the floor. I didn’t know what to do with that so I walked back out completely perplexed about the whole situation. Turns out, nice places usually have “western” toilets along with the squatties. Thank Goodness.

Ryan’s mom, Linda, picked us up from the airport with her friend Natalie and we went to an apartment they rented for a few nights in Bejing.

Day 1 of Bejing – Art District – March 14th 2010

It just so happened to snow on our first day here. I swear the snow has just been following us this whole trip! It’s kind of unbelievable actually. We didn’t let that stop us from going out and taking advantage of our time there though. We decided to go to the art district and even though it was super cold, I am SO happy we went!

We only saw a little portion of it with the time that we had but saw a lot of cool things. I bought what is by far one of the cutest toys I have ever owned. I decided to name him Clarence.

The place where we bought him had all kinds of other animals waiting for me to take them and give them a good home. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough room in my suitcase.

I did have enough room for this little crazy dude though, his name is Bill. :)  Bill and Clarence have already bonded and I’m pretty sure are best friends.

This is how many alarms we should probably have to get us up in the morning…they could also come chase after us too which would get me out of bed pretty quick.

There is so much to say about this photo that I’m kind of stumped as to what to say about this photo, haha. This is a real dog who has been stuffed and will forever be in this very awesome position.

On our way back I learned how mind blowing fruit is here in comparison to our country and they cut pineapples in the coolest way!

And Bill likes to be sneaky and get in all our shots.

NEXT: Day 2 of China: Shopping at Silk Street!

We made our way up to San Francisco yesterday and had planned to stay with our friends Ryan and Steph Hupfer. Well, turns out Steph is in Hawaii and Ryan just left for a work thing in Austin. Their roommate Nic was still there so we were still able to stay at their place.

Today is our last day to get ready for our trip to China. I had big plans for today. We got up fairly early but things started to not feel right even in the beginning of the day. My big goal for the day was to get everything done to have enough time to see Alice in Wonderland since I have been waiting for months for it to come out. Since it came out, we have been too busy to see it and now we are going to China for almost a month and I don’t know if it will still be in the theatre.

I had a plan in my head of how today would go but since parking is really difficult around here and Ryan was already out, my plans changed a little bit. He got almost everything we needed from the store so I figured we would be ok. He even had to drive all over town to find a downy ball because I get really itchy without it as well as finding the right detergent.

Ryan needed a haircut and I desperately needed my bangs trimmed. Finding a salon that doesn’t charge $80 is difficult around here, especially when you don’t know where to look and you need 2 appointments that day. So, I found a paul mitchell school that charges $15 and since it was only my bangs and Ryan’s hair is pretty easy, I figured it would be alright. They did a good job but took forever since they are still students. To get my bangs trimmed, they had to wash, dry, and style my hair as well. It would have taken her 10 minutes to dry cut them but her instructor said she had to do all that other stuff. So that took us 2 hours.

We get back to the apartment and started doing laundry. I was in the living room working on the laptop trying to get an album ordered so I had Ryan start the laundry. He put in the first load and everything was fine. When it was done, he put it in the dryer, put a new load in the wash and then went to take a shower.

I was sitting on the couch when I heard something weird. I thought maybe it was an imbalanced load or something. I got up and walked over to the washing machine to see what was going on and all of the sudden I am flat on my back on the floor… soaking wet. I slipped in a giant pool of water. It all happened in less than a second and I was completely confused.

I immediately saw that water was pouring out over the kitchen sink. I got up to turn the faucet off, but it wasn’t on. I looked back towards the washing machine and I think I saw water pouring out from underneath it. I tried to shut it off but because I was panicking I didn’t notice I had turned off the dryer, not the washer so thats why it kept coming out. I looked out towards the rest of the kitchen and the water was creeping towards the stairs.

I seriously went into panic mode and started hyperventilating. I grabbed all the towels I could find and put them by the stairs to keep it from going down there and started screaming at the top of my lungs for Ryan. He couldn’t hear me because of the shower was too loud apparently. I ran into the bathroom and started yelling “the apartment is flooding, you have to come now!!!” His eyes were full of soap and he had no idea what I was talking about. When he came down he was able to stop the water but by then there was just water everywhere and of course, I was still freaking out and slipped and fell again. It wasn’t till the adrenaline of the whole situation wore off that I realized how much my back hurt. I just couldn’t even process what was happening and couldn’t stop thinking “wood floors, water everywhere, bad, very bad!”

He called Nic and luckily he was on his way back already. As I am still frantically trying to soak everything up I hear a knock on the door and it is a couple of other people who live in the building trying to see where the water was coming from… since it was leaking into the hallway and the garage beneath the apartment.

I should also add there were not enough towels to soak up the amount of water that was there and no mop. We were ringing them out in the bathroom and then reusing them to get it all up. Luckily, as far as I can tell, nothing was damaged from the water. Right after I fell and figured out what was going on, I started grabbing things that were in the path of the river in the kitchen and threw them to higher ground like a crazy woman.

In the end of it all, we were able to dry it all up, but my gosh, I nearly lost it. After I got Ryan down to help, I could hardly breathe. I think I may have had a panic attack, I’m not sure. I should google it and see.

So at this point, we still have to do laundry since the majority of our clothes are dirty. So we head out to find a laundromat that isn’t too skeevy, since it is now nighttime. We find a decent place and then realize we forgot our soap and precious downy ball back at the apartment. Awesome. We drive all the way back, get the soap and then I start doing the laundry.

It is 9pm now.

We still have to finish drying, fold everything, go back to the apartment, re-pack everything to fit in our suitcases and get all the final details worked out. My hope of seeing Alice in Wonderland is gone. I am really praying it is still in the theaters in mid april since we will be in hawaii then. We still need to book a hotel for hawaii too. We may have already waited too long in planning that as well.

Even without going to the movie tonight, I really don’t feel like we have enough time to get everything done. I don’t intentionally do things at the last minute yet we do it so very very much.

We walk out the door at 7:30am tomorrow morning.

This is why I always say leave time for things to go wrong…because let’s face it, weird things happen and they are time suckers…like having your friends apartment flood while your there.

…And because no post is good enough with a picture… Here is a sneak peak of what we did last night (since I am way behind on blogging and starting from the beginning of the trip.) :)